It is never easy going from child star to Hollywood actor. You need only look at the careers of Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes and Macaulay Culkin to see how young lives can veer off the freeway into the desert.

Growing into adult roles was no Sunday drive for Christina Ricci, either. She first shone as a nine-year-old alongside Cher in Mermaids (1990), then charmed as the deadpan Wednesday in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993). While she has admitted to anorexia and cutting herself during her vulnerable years and has a defiant tattoo that says "move or die", Ricci has managed growing up famous better than most Hollywood child stars, though she is glad she is not doing it now.

"It's such a different world than it was when I was coming of age," she says from New York. "I don't know how these young people keep it together with all the demands on them with social media and the internet.

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"I had normal growing pains and issues and it was difficult but not disastrous. But I feel like if I was trying to do that in this environment, the way that society is now, I would probably be a total disaster."

At 34, Ricci has well and truly grown up – as her use of the phrase "these young people" indicates.

After starring opposite a ghost in Casper (1995), the game-changer for her career was playing a troubled suburban teenager in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997), quickly followed by a trash-talking, sexually advanced teen in The Opposite of Sex (1998) and an ex-prisoner's hostage in Buffalo '66 (1998). Tiny – barely five feet tall – with large expressive eyes, Ricci might have looked innocent but her mouthy characters acted in dark, suggestive or downright dangerous ways.

Having grown up in California then New Jersey with a mother who worked in real estate and a father who was a lawyer and group therapist, Ricci was ambitious to be an actor from her early years. "If I hadn't gone into acting, I would have been one of those weird runaways on Hollywood Boulevard," she once told a magazine. "No, it'd be uglier. I'd probably be dead."

Graduating to adult roles, she shone as the girlfriend of a serial killer played by Charlize Theron in Monster (2003), then as a sexually voracious prisoner in Black Snake Moan (2006). More sedate characters in the television series Ally McBeal and Grey's Anatomy showed her range.

In control: Christina Ricci in The Opposite of Sex. Photo: Supplied

The boldness that Ricci has shown on screen since those early indie films brought her to Australia to shoot what must have sounded a risky proposition: the low-budget drama Around the Block, by unknown writer-director Sarah Spillane, set amid the turmoil in the Aboriginal community during the Redfern riots.

Just before The Block in Redfern was redeveloped, Hollywood came to one of the city's most troubled and impoverished areas.

Ricci plays Dino Chalmers, an American teacher at Redfern High School who wants to stage a production of Hamlet. But the talented young student who is cast as the Danish prince, Liam (Hunter Page-Lochard), is struggling with family dramas of his own, including a father (Matt Nable) in jail for armed robbery and a brother (Mark Coles Smith) who wants revenge on the man who put him there.

Cool ghoul: Christina Ricci as Wednesday in The Addams Family Values. Photo: Supplied

The drama was well received when it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. Its strong cast includes Jack Thompson as the school's principal, Damian Walshe-Howling as a history teacher who thinks a football match is a more fitting Aboriginal celebration than a Shakespeare play and Daniel Henshall as Dino's fiancee.

With Thompson the only actor she knew and not much of a pay cheque by Hollywood standards, Ricci was drawn across the Pacific by the story.

"I read the script and I just found it incredibly moving," she says. "I didn't really know much about the issues that had gone on there so I was very interested to meet Sarah and learn about it all."

On an earlier visit to Australia with a former boyfriend, Speed Racer co-star Kick Gurry, Ricci became curious about Aboriginal culture.

"I was lucky enough that as soon as I got to Sydney [for filming], there was a meeting arranged with some of the community leaders in Redfern and on The Block," she says. "Redfern seems like a very small enclave in the middle of the city and how it's had all these specific problems just unto itself is very fascinating."

Spillane, a long-time Redfern resident who taught at the largely indigenous Eora College, drew on personal experience writing the script. She lived metres from The Block during the riots that were sparked by what the community saw as police involvement in the death of teenager "T.J." Hickey in 2004.

"The riots were a scary time for everyone, including the local indigenous residents, because tension between locals and the police had reached boiling point," she says. "There was a lot of anger and The Block looked and felt like a war zone."

Spillane knew the personal stories of teenagers caught up in the riots. Like Liam in the film, many were torn between a sense of duty to fight for their community and wanting reconciliation through other methods. She saw students at Eora turning to art, music, video and theatre to get their voices heard.

"We have such a misconception of Redfern," she says. "What I was trying to do in Around the Block was show these kids all have their individual stories and obstacles, but there's so much hope and so much cause for celebration.”

As unlikely as it seemed, Spillane always wanted Ricci for the part, believing "the characters she chooses are just so interesting".

"What was really important was the person who played that role was someone who came to the story without knowing the sensitivities surrounding indigenous politics," she says. "I knew I wanted a foreigner and, as you do, started making lists. Christina was always at the top of my list."

Like so many American filmmakers, Spillane wanted the edge that Ricci brings to her roles. The part called for an actress who could not only talk inspiringly to a classroom about the joys of Shakespeare but also have a lesbian sex scene with Ruby Rose as uncertainties arise about her new life in Australia.

While agreeing she was a fish out of water on set, Ricci says that helped her performance.

"Being an outsider was great for me because I really could discover all these new things with the character, and really come in as somebody who was learning everything for the first time," she says.

As she discovered more, Ricci saw parallels with her own country. "As an American, the way we've dealt with our indigenous people, we have a horrible record for that," she says.

But asked for her observations of how Australia is handling Aboriginal issues, she baulks. "It's not my country," she says. "I don't have the direct experience that I would have if I was Australian and I don't feel comfortable speaking about another country's issues from thousands of miles away."

Ricci does say she learnt something, however, from being surrounded by so many teenagers on set. "I learnt a lot about myself playing this part," she says. "I learned to be much more real and in the moment and almost casual with my acting, which was very different for me.

"They brought out a lot of spontaneity and a natural quality in my performance that I wasn't really expecting."

The Hollywood star was particularly impressed with Page-Lochard, whose father is choreographer Stephen Page, the artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, and mother is former ballerina Cynthia Lochard. "Hunter is incredibly talented," she says. "He's a kid really but he was so professional on set and so present. And it's the most beautiful performance."

For his part, Page-Lochard says it was different working with Ricci than with Geoffrey Rush, whom he starred with on Bran Nue Dae, or Chris O'Dowd, whom he met on The Sapphires. "I thought, 'Oh my god, she's Wednesday Addams, she's all these quirky and vicious characters'," he says. "But acting is making you perceive those things and she was nothing like I expected. We'd have conversations that weren't about the movie and she made me feel really comfortable. I started seeing her then as not a Hollywood star."

The 20-year-old, who was just 10 at the time of the Redfern riots but remembers the turmoil in the indigenous community, says Ricci was genuinely interested in Aboriginal culture. "Americans, full stop, have no clue [about it], so whenever they get a perception of what it really is, they're all ears, especially artists."

A first-time Australian director must have been quite a change for an actress who has worked over the years with such feted filmmakers as Ang Lee, Terry Gilliam in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, Tim Burton in Sleepy Hollow, the Wachowskis in Speed Racer, Sally Potter in The Man Who Cried and Woody Allen in Anything Else. There have also been films with two famous actors who turned to directing: Anjelica Huston in Bastard out of Carolina and Morgan Freeman in Desert Blue.

But Ricci is effusive about working with Spillane on Around the Block.

"The thing you most want in the director is somebody who has a very clear perspective and knows how to execute it and communicate it and she was always that kind of director," she says. "From the very beginning, I felt safe and comfortable in her hands. It's not always that way, so it was really great."

Given how much America's indie film sector has changed, Ricci, like so many other actors, is grateful for the quality of television series and telemovies. Finding strong roles takes patience, she says.

"You sometimes spend months just waiting for something great to come in. They're making a lot less movies right now for theatrical release; there aren't so many independent films as there used to be, certainly not that many quality ones.

"A lot of genre films have taken over in the independent world. But people are now making really quality content for television. TV has certainly saved a lot of actors in terms of what's lacking in theatrical work."

Spillane is just as enthusiastic about Ricci, whose life changed shortly after making Around the Block. She married James Heerdegen, a crew member she met on the television series Pan Am, and is pregnant with her first child.

Says Spillane: "She basically said, 'I know this means a lot to you, I know there's part of you in this character, so I want to do whatever I can. You just tell me what you want'. To me, that was remarkable.

"It's very hard often to get these films made without the backing of a profiled cast member. Something like Black Snake Moan or Monster, they're hard stories to tell, even with a great cast. So when you get support from someone like Christina, the contribution they're making to the film industry on a greater level is enormous."

Around the Block screens at the Cremorne Orpheum on June 16 and the Randwick Ritz on June 23. Its digital and DVD release is on July 16.